MOGADISHU, June 4, 2007 – A suicide bomber in a car killed seven people near the home of Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi in the capital Mogadishu yesterday, but he was unhurt, security sources and witnesses said.

“I saw limbs nearly 1km from where the suicide bomber detonated,” said a police officer at the scene.

“Prime Minister Gedi was unhurt. The vehicle exploded outside the gate of his house,” he said. “We don’t how the suicide bomber managed to pass through undetected ... The wounded cannot be counted.”

A security source close to the prime minister said seven people were killed, including five soldiers guarding the residence. The blast flattened other buildings in the area.

Another witness at the scene said an Islamic school was among the buildings damaged in the explosion. “No one knows what happened to the children inside,” he said.

Earlier, the prime minister’s spokesman Abdillahi Muhidin said: “Four people were killed and seven were wounded.”

“This was an attack against the prime minister. This is the work of anti-peace elements who want to terrorize the Somali people.”

“They will not go away with this murder of officers and they shall be hunted and brought to justice. The prime minister is not hurt by the attack and would continue to serve his people,” he added.

Meanwhile, at least 12 Islamist fighters, including foreigners, were killed in US naval shelling and fighting with regional forces in Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland, officials said yesterday.

The Puntland government said its forces crushed the fighters in the hilly areas around the town of Bargal, about 1,250km northeast of Mogadishu, before a US Navy warship shelled the area.

“Their bodies are lying in the mountainous area and we hope to show them to the media. They (Islamists) have lost in the battle and we killed 12 of them,” said a Puntland military commander who requested anonymity.

“We surrounded the whole area and we expected that none of them would flee,” the commander added by satellite phone from the corpse-strewn scene of the clashes.

Puntland Finance Minister Mohamed Ali Yusuf meanwhile told reporters in the northern Somali town of Bosasso: “Our forces defeated the Islamist fighters consisting of Somali and foreign fighters, most of them are dead now and some of them have fled the area. Our forces are fully controlling Bargal.”

Citing documents recovered, Yusuf said the “terrorists (were) from America, Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen.”

“Five of our own fighters were wounded in the fighting in Bargar,” he added.

There was no independent confirmation of the claims on the deaths of the foreigners who arrived in Bargal last Wednesday, but terrified residents reported fatalities.

Residents said at least 15 people were wounded when a US Navy destroyer on Friday fired on several targets in the mountainous terrains, where Al Qaeda operatives and Somali Islamists are believed to have bases.

“The casualty (number) could be far higher than we think. But so far, we have been told that 15 people were injured in the attack and some of them are nomad civilians,” said Mohamed Gure, another resident in a village some 30km from Bargal.

Gure said the injured were taken to Bosasso township for treatment.

Duale Hussein Mohamed, an elder in the township, said the US warships also hit a civilian village near the remote fishing outpost.

“The American warships hit nomadic residential areas. We think there are more casualties,” Duale said.

According to a CNN report, the US naval destroyer from a Djibouti-based anti-terrorism coalition called Combined Task Force 150 was targeting a suspected Al Qaeda operative linked to the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, mainly Africans.

The vessel fired missiles overnight Friday after Puntland forces chased the Islamists fighters into the hilly areas, residents said.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates refused to comment on the shelling, saying only it was “possibly an ongoing operation.”

“I think that’s possibly an ongoing operation and I’m not going to be able to talk about that,” Gates said in Singapore.
In January, a US gunship targeted positions in southern Somalia after Ethiopia-backed government forces ousted Islamists from the country’s southern and central regions, where they had started imposing Sharia law.

Local elders said more than 100 civilians were killed in the January attacks, which targeted Al Qaeda operatives blamed both for the 1998 US embassy bombings and the 2002 suicide attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in the Kenyan Indian Ocean city of Mombassa that killed 15 people.

Among the so-called “high value” Al Qaeda operatives believed to be in Somalia are Fazul Abdullah Mohammed from the Comoros, Kenyan Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Sudanese national Abu Taha al-Sudani, an arms expert close to Osama bin Laden.

Others are Sheikh Dahir Aweys, the hardline cleric heading Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union, and Adan Hashi Ayro, the commander of the group’s dreaded Shabaab militia wing.

The Puntland and neighboring Somaliland regions have declared a form of autonomy and have enjoyed relative stability compared to Somalia proper, which has been wracked by lawlessness since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre.

Meanwhile, in Mogadishu yesterday, Ethiopian forces killed a civilian and wounded two others after narrowly escaping a roadside bomb explosion, the latest in a string of Iraq-style attacks that have convulsed the lawless capital.

With the help of African Union peacekeepers, the hapless Somali government is currently trying to restore stability and expand its tenuous control across the war-weary nation of 10mn people.

Earlier, the mayor of Mogadishu yesterday accused influential clan elders of fomenting violence in the capital as the government struggles to exert control across the shattered African nation.

Mohamed Omar Habeb, a former warlord in central Somalia, said the dominant Hawiye clan elders had failed to stem the roadside explosions and assassinations of government officials carried out by unruly Islamist and clan fighters.

“These elders are fighting the government and they will be held responsible for the death of government workers. We are responsible for the security of the people and we will punish these elders,” Habeb said.

“We do not want to be killers like them, but we will act responsibly and carry out our mandate,” he said after Ethiopian forces killed a civilian and wounded two others after narrowly escaping a roadside explosion in southern Mogadishu.

Habeb said the elders recently met with President Abdillahi Yusuf Ahmed and gave false promises of working to restore security in Mogadishu, which has been wracked by insurgency since Ethiopia-backed Somali forces ousted an Islamist movement there early this year.

“Violence has limits and we will never tolerate the killing of our people,” said Habeb.

But the elders dismissed the accusations, instead calling on the government to ensure security in Mogadishu.

“These accusations are unfounded and it is the responsibility of the government to restore peace in Mogadishu,” said Abdi Haji Iman, a spokesmen for the elders.

Elders have played a key role in brokering peace in Somalia since 1991, when the ousting of Mohamed Siyad Barre’s draconian government touched off deadly power games that have defied numerous attempts to restore a functional administration. –

Source: Gulf Times/Agencies